All personal photos are copyrighted. Unauthorized use of them is prohibited. Please contact simonmorley@outlook.com for any further information.

Tuesday, 15 November 2016

Smokestack Lightning

Mantis shrimp are amazing creatures. They can strike prey as fast as 330 metres a second, but some other mantis shrimp use a stabbing technique to kill.

The little critters hide their body up to their eyes in the sand as
they wait for a fish to swim by. When a fish gets close, the mantis
shrimp shoots its body out of the sand, impales the fish with serrated
blades, and then drags the fish back into the sand with it. All this
happens in a matter of seconds, so it’s almost like the fish just
disappeared.

With eyes that have six pseudopupils and 12 color
receptors, they have exceptional vision compared to us. We only have two pupils and 3 color receptors. But beyond
that, what’s really impressive is their ability to see polarization. Scientists have found that some mantis shrimp species use circular
polarization to communicate with each other on a kind of secret visual
channel for mating and territorial purposes.